


i've never seen nobody shine the way you do

by piginawig



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, College AU, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Prompt Fill, Richie and Eddie's language comes with its own warning!, and they were roommates!, nobody forgets! they all stay friends! pennywise actually died the first time!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 11:08:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29949078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piginawig/pseuds/piginawig
Summary: It was like this: Richie had thought that moving to New York together, getting an apartment and going to school, would be good for both of them. And it was!But! While Richie had thought that he had reached his limit, his max capacity, the top level of Loving Eddie Kaspbrak, he was now being proven dead wrong. Perhaps there was no cap to how much a man could love Eddie Kaspbrak, and wouldn’t that have been nice to know before he’d gone and moved in with the little asshole.Because it was one thing to see each other every day at school, and to have sleepovers on Friday nights, and to spend their afternoons together doing fuck-all, but it was another to see Eddie fresh from the shower, his wavy hair dripping water droplets onto his bare shoulders, his skin flushed from the heat. It was another to wake up and eat breakfast together every morning and dinner together almost every night. Especially since Eddie had decided to start looking like he did now, all bright-eyed and ready to take on the world.So, it was like this: living with Eddie had him absolutely fucked.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 7
Kudos: 107





	i've never seen nobody shine the way you do

When Stan had asked him, with a single judgmental eyebrow raised, if he thought it was a good idea for he and Eddie to be roommates, Richie had shrugged him off with a laugh. _Of course it’ll be fine, Stan the Man, we’re best friends!_

Stan had given him A Look that said he didn’t believe Richie’s bullshit.

But Stan’s silent warnings had gone unheeded, and now Richie lived in a tiny shithole apartment in New York City with his best friend, and it was a fucking nightmare.

Because somewhere along the way – Richie guesses it was between coming out and being constantly hit on at their school’s GSA – Eddie got confident. And while Richie had always found Eddie to be the cutest person in any room, and he’d been attracted to him since before he understood what it meant, and he’d thought was he was hotter than any guy he’d ever met, he just simply wasn’t prepared for _this_.

Confident Eddie was the sexiest thing Richie Tozier had ever seen in his goddamn life.

It wasn’t even like Eddie was out hooking up right left and center (which Richie would've been totally fine with and not at all jealous about). He’d gone on three different dates with three different guys, and been home by midnight each time. Richie didn’t have the stomach to ask him what had happened on any of them but he figured it couldn’t be much considering Eddie always walked into the apartment afterward looking thoroughly un-ruffled.

But it wasn’t about that, the dates, what was happening or not happening with other guys. It was the way he walked and talked. He held his chin up a little higher, he had a skip in his step, he had a new glimmer in his eyes. He looked so free, all the time, like he didn’t give a fuck what anyone around him thought. Richie could not relate to that on any level, caring deeply what everyone thought about him all the time, but he loved the look on Eddie.

It was like this: Richie had thought that moving to New York together, getting an apartment and going to school, would be good for both of them. And it was! Eddie was just working on his basics, not sure yet what exactly he wanted to pursue as a career, and Richie was taking his basics plus some RTVF electives. Eddie had a part-time job at a local grocery store and Richie worked as an assistant (read: coffee-maker) at the university’s radio station, and they were both doing well for themselves, making new friends (though never ones that felt anything like friendship with The Losers; he often wondered if he’d never love anyone new the same way he loved all of them) and carving out a little life for themselves.

But! While Richie had thought that he had reached his limit, his max capacity, the top level of Loving Eddie Kaspbrak, he was now being proven dead wrong. Perhaps there was no cap to how much a man could love Eddie Kaspbrak, and wouldn’t that have been nice to know before he’d gone and moved in with the little asshole.

Because it was one thing to see each other every day at school, and to have sleepovers on Friday nights, and to spend their afternoons together doing fuck-all, but it was another to see Eddie fresh from the shower, his wavy hair dripping water droplets onto his bare shoulders, his skin flushed from the heat. It was another to wake up and eat breakfast together every morning and dinner together almost every night. Especially since Eddie had decided to start looking like he did now, all bright-eyed and ready to take on the world.

So Stan was right, even though Richie would never tell him; living with Eddie had him absolutely fucked.

* * *

“You’re up early,” Eddie commented, shutting his bedroom door behind him. Richie glanced up from the tiny kitchen table where he was scrawling jokes in a notebook. He nudged his glasses up from where they’d fallen down his nose and pushed his curls off his forehead. Eddie was wearing these loose jeans and a big sweater, his hair in disarray from sleep, and it was giving Richie heart palpitations. He watched Eddie move through the small kitchen to grab the box of Cheerios from the top of the fridge, pushing himself up on his tiptoes and exposing a strip of skin between his sweater and jeans. Richie swallowed thickly. Eddie turned back to look at him, eyebrow raised in question.

Richie realized he’d just been sitting there, silently staring. “Uh, yeah,” he said, clearing his throat. “Just working on some stuff. One of the interns at the station was telling me about this club where people do stand-up routines, and I was just -. You know. Thinking.”

Eddie pulled the milk from the refrigerator. “I think that’d be really cool for you, Rich. If it’s a club, though – do they allow people under 21?”

Richie watched closely as Eddie poured in first his cereal, then the milk, before placing the milk and the box back in their places.

“Rich!” Eddie said, startling him. He’d been staring at that little sliver of skin again.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, gripping his pen tightly and screaming at himself inside his head. What the fuck was wrong with him? It was still Eddie! Just because he’d gotten cool and confident in some indescribable way that had Richie twisting up from the inside out didn’t mean he had to act like such a… _loser_.

“Are you getting enough sleep?” Eddie asked, taking a seat at the table across from him. “I know you’ve been working a lot and you're _making connections_ and all that but I really think you should at least give yourself one day off –“

“I’m sleeping fine,” Richie interrupted, offering a smile. “Just in my head today, I guess.”

“You’ve been in your head a lot lately,” Eddie noted.

“Yeah, well.” Richie didn’t say anything else, unaware of what he could say without baring his whole dumb heart and soul. They sat without speaking while Eddie ate his breakfast and Richie pretended to write jokes (instead he had written ‘ _what the fuck is wrong with me_ ’, ‘ _what the fuck what the fuck what the fuck_ ’, and ‘ _ahhhhhhhh I’m so fucking stupid!!!!!_ ’).

Once Eddie had finished eating and rinsed his bowl (and loaded it into the dishwasher like a responsible little fucker) he made his way to their lumpy second-hand couch (taken from the Tozier family basement, and therefore not potentially disease-ridden) and flopped down. The quiet settled between them only for a few moments before Eddie spoke. “Would you come here for a sec?”

Richie closed his notebook and took it to doorway of his bedroom, tossing it aimlessly inside the room and shutting the door behind him. He went to the couch and sat opposite of Eddie.

“Yes, Eddie my love?” He asked, trying to be normal.

“You know how you came with me to the GSA a couple weeks ago? When you said you like, weren’t sure about, whatever, and… You know.”

Richie cringed with his entire body. “Er, yeah,” he croaked.

“I don’t mean to push you or anything but like… We never talked about if – Well, you just never said anything after that, and never went back. I just was wondering if you, uh, decided, I guess.”

Richie had wished with every bone in his body that _that_ whole experience had been a terrible fever dream. What had possessed him to tell Eddie he was “questioning” how he felt (there was no _question_ about it, he was gay as fuck and he’d known it since he was 13) and attend that fucking meeting with him? Only to watch Eddie talk and laugh with his new friends, to watch him get hit on, to watch that little blush on his cheeks, always put there by someone else. He could remember a time when a carefully placed “ _cute cute cute!_ ” was the only thing that could make Eddie blush like that. Now the like barely made him blink.

“I – uh,” he said eloquently.

“Never mind,” Eddie rushed, shaking his head and laughing a little. “I shouldn’t have asked, it’s – it’s not my business, I’m being pushy –“

“No, you’re not, you’re fine, I’m being…” he trailed off, looking away from Eddie to the bare wall of their apartment. Neither had the budget for much interior decorating, but there was a chip in the paint near the window that Richie found with his eyes, and he decided to place his focus there. “Yeah, no I – I don’t think I really needed to go.”

“Oh.” Richie’s heart panged at the disappointment evident in Eddie’s voice. His stomach twisted into knots. What the fuck did that _mean_? What did _Eddie_ think _he_ meant? What the fuck? “That’s –“

Richie peeled his eyes away from the wall to look imploringly at the other boy, who was sitting with one leg bent up on the couch, the other foot touching the floor so that he was facing Richie. He was hunched in on himself a little, and the corners of his mouth were turned down. Richie fucking hated it. He scooted over, erasing the space between them.

“I didn’t need to go,” Richie said, hoping Eddie was getting the implication without him having to say out loud _I didn’t need to go because I already knew, and by the way, I love you, please love me back, thanks._

“That’s fine.” Eddie’s voice was hollow. He hadn’t gotten it.

Richie opened his mouth, then closed it again. How the fuck was he supposed to even say this? Did he _want_ to even say this? What if Eddie hated him?

“I just thought, maybe, you know – maybe you were… into me, or whatever, but it’s fine, seriously, that was…”

Richie’s brain began to buzz. Holy fuck. Eddie was disappointed… because he thought Richie _wasn’t into him_? Holy fuck.

Without thinking any farther than ‘ _fuck fuck fuck I’m about to kiss him fuck_ ’, Richie cupped Eddie’s cheeks, effectively cutting off his ramble, and began to lean in.

“Wait, what are you –“

“Eddie, baby,” he almost laughed. He pressed his forehead against Eddie’s, marveling at the feeling of Eddie’s breath on his face. “I didn’t need to go because I already knew.”

He felt Eddie’s breath hitch and watched his tongue dart out, licking his lips. “Are you sure? I can’t be an experiment for you, Rich, I won’t do that –“

“I have been in love with you for as long as I can remember,” he murmured, pressing even closer.

“Oh.” His voice went up in pitch. Before he could say anything else, Richie closed the distance between them. Eddie’s cheeks were warm beneath his hands, and his lips were soft and a little wet. 

They kissed for a while, pressed together on their shitty couch in their shitty apartment, until their lips were swollen and they couldn’t stop smiling against each other’s mouths.

Later, they tangled their legs together in Eddie’s bed, heads sharing a pillow, music playing softly in the background.

“I can’t believe you’ve loved me since we were kids,” Eddie said. Richie bit his lip. He didn’t know what to say without sounding like a the lovesick idiot he was. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”

“Well first of all, you didn’t even come out til we left Derry, so…”

“Okay, then why didn’t you tell me after I came out?”

“I was… scared, I guess, I dunno. You’ve always scared the fuck outta me, Eds. Scared me and… Made me fuckin’ crazy. Like when we were younger and you had the biggest boner for Big Bill –“

“What the _fuck_ , I did not –“

“Oh you absolutely did, take it from the guy who was so jealous he couldn’t see straight –“

Eddie shoved at him half-heartedly. “What, when we were like, 13? Like that – _that summer_?” Richie swallowed and nodded. “Rich, you were fucking unbearable that summer. It was like your entire goal in life was to annoy the hell out of me.”

“Sorry,” he muttered, feeling how red his cheeks were. He should’ve kept his stupid mouth shut. He’d never been good at keeping his mouth shut. “Just wanted you to pay attention to me.”

“Aw, Rich,” Eddie breathed, pressing closer and kissing his cheek. “That’s so sweet. In an insane way.”

“Can we turn this around, please?” Richie begged, only kind of joking. “Like, when did _you_ know you –“ He stopped. Eddie had never actually said he loved him, he’d just kissed him back. What if he –

“I knew I loved you in sophomore year,” Eddie said, cutting off his destructive train of thought. “I thought you got hot over the summer – that was when you grew like six inches in a month –“

“That’s not the only thing that grew, baby –“

“- _shut up_ – and we had that sleepover at Stan’s, the one where we watched that movie Poltergeist because Stan’s mom decided he was finally old enough to watch scary movies. We all got so fucking freaked out at the clown doll, right? Well, we were already sitting next to each other, sharing that big armchair that was meant for one person, and it was like… so natural when you grabbed my hand. And I looked at you and you were already looking at me and you just kind of smiled a little bit and I could tell you were scared, too, but it felt like…”

“Making sure you weren’t scared was more important than my own fear,” Richie finished quietly.

“Yeah,” Eddie agreed. “That was when I knew.”

After a few minutes of quiet, Richie said, “Thanks for saying I got hot.”

Eddie snorted. “Oh my god, Richie, that’s what you got from that?”

Richie laughed, turning even more toward Eddie to see the crinkles by his eyes when he smiled.

“I mean, it felt like a very important piece of information.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “So what, you thought I was hot all the way back when we were 13?”

“I thought you were cute,” Richie said. Eddie just stared at him. “Okay. I thought you were hot. But do you know when you got like, really, next level hot?”

Eddie snorted again. “Sure, when was that?” He asked, almost like he was afraid of the answer.

“After we moved here.”

“Seriously?” Eddie’s eyebrows furrowed a little.

“Yeah. You got like… I dunno. _Confident_ , and like, you just started walking around like you didn’t care, and it was just… I mean, it’s this vibe, you know? I always thought you were like, fucking awesome, or whatever, but then we got here and I guess coming out and getting like, hit on and shit at the gay club made your self-esteem just skyrocket, and –“

“I do _not_ get hit on that much, first of all,” Eddie said, rolling his eyes. “And secondly, it doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s – I feel free. For the first time in my life. I don’t have to answer to anyone, I don’t have my mom forcing medicine at me, or dragging me to the emergency room, or reminding me _wear your rainboots, Eddie!,_ _don’t forget your helmet, Eddie!, that sugar’s gonna give you cancer, Eddie!,_ I don’t have to hide or… make myself small, you know?”

“Yeah,” Richie whispered in awe. Somehow he still had not hit max capacity for loving Eddie Kaspbrak.

“Anyway. Is that why you wanted to come to the meeting? To see if other guys were hitting on me?” Eddie gave him A Look that would put Stan to shame.

“No!” He said honestly. “That was just my fucking mouth, I don’t even know where it came from – I didn’t even want to go, I just fucking… started talking and couldn’t stop. It’s a disease, Eds. There’s no cure.”

Eddie laughed. “No cure to shutting you up?”

“Not a one,” Richie agreed solemnly. Eddie started moving closer; he bit his cheek to keep from smiling.

“I can think of one,” Eddie whispered, pressing their lips together, and Richie was cured.

**Author's Note:**

> this is based off of a prompt i received on tumblr from an anon: a college AU where eddie is proudly out as a gay man and very confident in himself and that makes richie like uncontrollably attracted to him! i see soo many fics where eddie is like a puritanical repressed extra shy dude and i mean thats valid but i see him as such a firecracker and i’d love to see him living his best life as soon as he frees himself from his mothers grip.


End file.
